Petra Volpe’s LATE SHIFT starts with a laundry production line of nurses’ scrubs. The images are likely to be a comment on the revolving door through which individuals pass in this stressful profession with a high attrition rate. The taut feature, foregrounding an empathetic and pathos-filled performance from Leonie Benesch, builds up the stress of a nurse’s evening with skilful pacing and shot choices.

The film follows Floria through her evening shift, flitting between impatient patients and relatives, with the nurse taking the flak for long waits for doctors, medication, or comforts. The film swiftly gets into the unpleasant realities of her work, with Floria assisting a colleague in changing an elderly patient who has excrement running down her leg. As the evening progresses, tempers fray, and Floria has to contain her frustration with the patients’ attitudes, her nursing colleagues, and the doctors allegedly supporting her.

“The true root of the effectiveness [of Volpe’s shot choices] lies in the movement of the camera; like Floria, it never rests, and is constantly moving, swirling, and gliding through the ward.”

In the opening stretches of the film, Volpe’s approach heightens the slow build of stress without being needlessly flashy. There are frequent long takes following Floria to several patient rooms or interactions, which effectively convey the continually demanding situation she finds herself in, even during the low-stakes interactions she begins with. However, they lack the ostentatiousness of something like BOILING POINT or similar films, which up the ante even further, revelling in pulling off an inordinately long ‘oner’. LATE SHIFT is certainly lent impact by some of the longer takes Volpe pursues, but without them becoming the dominant stylistic conceit. The true root of the effectiveness lies in the movement of the camera; like Floria, it never rests, and is constantly moving, swirling, and gliding through the ward.

As Floria’s stress levels grow, the camera moves in closer and becomes more obviously handheld and frenetic. Further, this energy has peaks and troughs. Floria’s shift is a marathon and not a sprint. The objective here is to tell the story of a shift, not to dramatise it unnecessarily. The intensity of situations comes in waves, and is not a constant build. That narrative ebb and flow allows for punctuating moments, such as when Floria explicitly apologises to a patient who has had to wait, or loses her rag at a doctor brushing off a patient in favour of going home. Moments of dark, cathartic humour are also possible when the stress of the situation is continual, rather than continually escalating.

“The intensity of situations comes in waves, and is not a constant build. That narrative ebb and flow allows for punctuating moments…”

Although the film follows a show-don’t-tell approach until its conclusion, the film finishes with a series of title card statements about the dire state of nursing in Switzerland and the world more broadly. Volpe’s previous feature, THE DIVINE ORDER, probably subtly undermined itself by not trusting the underlying feminist message and leaned too hard into tropes and sentimentality. However, by the time LATE SHIFT presents its explicit concluding facts, the film’s story of understaffing and suffering in microcosm is given a final punch. The film’s last earnest stretch for emotional engagement underscores a compelling story, rather than serving as a crutch for an underwhelming one.

One may argue that there is little story actually told in LATE SHIFT, but that mistakes plot developments for story. The tale here is of a profession long underappreciated and growing problems in healthcare, which we seem, globally, disinclined to address properly. The specific events in Floria’s evening don’t especially matter, but the resilience she shows in the face of whatever they may be matters hugely.